Excavations between Marian Hall and Cathedral Park have struck 17th century Santa Fe — bits of pottery that ceased to be imported into New Mexico after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

The Spanish Colonial artifacts were in a trash deposit that began 32 inches below the surface, a few feet on the other side of the stone wall along East Palace Avenue.

Even more intriguing is a cobblestone surface 4 1/2 feet down, just below the 17th century trash heap.

Jim Moore and Guadalupe Martinez of the state Office of Archaeological Studies say the cobbles could have been an extension of today's Otero Street to meet the Plaza when it was larger. The Plaza's surface has been built up with fill over the centuries.

"The second possibility, other than a cobble road, which nobody has ever heard of here, is that it might have been a stable yard," Moore said. "There is a 17th century stable yard on a site out near La Cienega."

"Finding stone down here is perplexing at the least," added Martinez.

The dig began last week to clear the way for plans to redevelop the old pink hospital building, known in recent years as Villa Rivera, and Marian Hall, an even older hospital building, as luxury hotels. Drury Hotels Inc. of San Antonio, Texas, also is looking to build new structures to the south of the two buildings.

The state archaeologists, who expect to conclude their test pits and trenches in three weeks, didn't initially expect to find any significant artifacts in the naturally marshy area on the east side of downtown.

The test pit near East Palace Avenue first turned up charred bricks from a wall that was knocked down and buried after a fire destroyed the original tuberculosis sanatorium there in 1896.

Immediately under that is an 1800s trash pit with pieces of glass, bottles, white wares, metal, nails and hunks of coal from the Madrid area. "It's a real mixture of stuff," Martinez said, "pretty solidly in 19th century, probably the latter half."

Immediately below that deposit is another trash heap from two centuries earlier. "It was really just a sudden bang — there we are, 17th century," Martinez said. "We're going like, 'Whoa, this is entirely different.' "

Martinez said he's not sure why nothing from the 1700s was found in between the two levels. "One theory (is that) maybe when they were building this hospital in the 19th century, they may have scraped down and in the process scraped away the 18th and maybe even part of the 17th century to get it level, and then built it up," he said.

The pre-1680 artifacts include:

• Three to four "dime-sized" pieces of the "Palacio blue majolica" style of pottery manufactured in Puebla, Mexico.

• Another small piece of red molded pottery from Mexico.

• Small pieces of white "Chinese trade ware" porcelain.

All these pottery types were commonly used by colonists in the early 1600s, but ceased to be manufactured or imported after the Pueblo Indians ran the Spanish out in 1680. Spanish colonists did not return until 1692.

The pit also yielded shards of Pueblo-glazed pottery from the Galisteo Basin that ceased to be manufacture in the early 1700s.

The pit near Palace Avenue was to be covered today after using an auger to burrow beneath the cobblestone surface to make sure there are no earlier signs of human habitation.

The find fills in the blanks about Santa Fe's earliest European settlement.

"We know where the Plaza was," Martinez said. "We know there was a church there, somewhere over there."

"And we know where the palace is," Moore added. "But most other records from the pre-revolt period were burned during the revolt so we don't have a lot of indications of where things were."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.